


Many Paths

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Hints of future cousin/half-sibling incest, Post-episode S07xE02, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 08:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11596488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: Of all her brothers, Jon was the last she could have imagined sending her a letter practically the moment he left her. It almost takes the sting out of him leaving her in the first place.





	Many Paths

The raven comes when Jon has not been gone even half a fortnight.

Sansa smiles to see it. It’s the first raven she’s been happy to receive in some time. Of all her brothers, Jon was the last she could have imagined sending her a letter practically the moment he left her. It almost takes the sting out of him leaving her in the first place. Winterfell. He left Winterfell, not her. It’s something she has to remind herself, that the only brother she has left will remain her brother, no matter where either of them may be. That she did not find him again only to lose him.

His letter is full of nothings: the quality of their travel, the state of winter as they move farther South, little things that Jon thinks will be of interest or amusement to her. She could almost forget that he goes South to treat with someone who has every reason to consider him the enemy. Sansa can read all the unsaid words slipped between the lines of his careful script, though. It’s simple for her to know what Jon doesn’t write when it’s all things she herself feels – that he’s frightened. That he misses her. That despite knowing he does what must be done, he wishes he were still home.

She writes back immediately, not even pausing to take off her cloak as she sits at the writing table in what was once her mother’s solar. Only her gloves are removed and set aside; she never quite manages script as prettily with gloves on as she does without. Why it matters that she sends something pretty to Jon, she isn’t sure, only that perhaps she remembers the long days she was away and how she yearned for lovely things. She might have given everything then for a single letter, for the slightest word of home or family. When she finally had returned to Winterfell, it had been a foreign place filled with Boltons, as ill-fitting as wearing a stranger’s dress. She’d been so eager to shed the uneasy guise of Alayne; she hadn’t known being Sansa Stark in the place that was no longer her home would feel a hundred times worse.

It was Jon who finally made her feel like she was home, even when they were leagues away. She supposes that’s what makes her write back to him so swiftly now. She knows how it is to be gone from everything you love. Not that Jon hasn’t been far from home just as long as she, but that was different somehow. That was before they’d lost so much, and gained back so little.

She hides as much between her lines as he. She doesn’t tell him how she fears for him, following the steps of Robb and their father before, and their father’s father before him, steps they never retraced. Nor does she tell him how even in so little time, the weight of ruling Winterfell is heavy. How sometimes she must steel the quiver out of her voice when speaking to the assembled lords and telling them of her decisions. Queerly, she had been far more certain of her thoughts when it had been upon someone else to take them or leave them. Now she questions everything, thinking twice and thrice on all she says. _Was that why you were always so serious, so quiet?_ she wants to ask him. So many things she wants to ask him. She only hopes she’ll have the chance.

She forces herself to stop writing, knowing that she could fill the parchment front and back, up, down and sideways. Impulsively, she kisses the parchment before rolling it closed, then blushes at herself. After she’s sealed it, she takes up her quill to sketch a paw print beside her seal. Beneath it, she writes “Ghost,” hoping that it will make Jon laugh on the long road South. That it will remind him what he rides to protect.

Unbidden, she remembers how he would smile at her, as soft and warm as her favorite furs. Sansa can’t remember the last man before Jon who smiled at her such a way. Men’s smiles come with men’s desires, in her experience. Men’s demands. Even in temper, Jon had never demanded a thing of her. They need the Dragon Queen; Sansa knows he’s right on that. It’s hard to shake the feeling, though, that in Jon going to her, Sansa has lost something she never knew she had.


End file.
